The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process
(see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to
this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list
of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's
charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by
the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions
of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical
discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.

To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS
member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC
chair, Tom Rutt (trutt@fsw.fujitsu.com) of your intent to participate at
least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend the first
meeting on 26 March 2003. You should also subscribe to the TC's mail
list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not by
organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you
time you notify the chair.

The private mail list wsrm@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee
discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members
should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to
wsrm-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the body
of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not make
you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC chair
and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding paragraph.)

A public comment list will be available for the public to make comments
on the work of this TC; a message may be sent to the TC via the address
wsrm-comment@lists.oasis-open.org.

The name of this Technical Committee is the Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM) Technical Committee (TC).

Purpose

The purpose of this TC is to create a generic and open model for
ensuring reliable message delivery for Web services.

This TC defines reliable message delivery as the ability to guarantee
message delivery to software applications -- Web services or Web service
client applications -- with a chosen level of quality of service (QoS).

For this TC effort, QoS will be defined as the ability to determine the
following aspects of message delivery:

Message persistence

Message acknowledgement and resending

Elimination of duplicate messages

Ordered delivery of messages

Delivery status awareness for sender and receiver applications

The TC will specify rules for combining these features and their parameters.

Essential elements of web services are SOAP and WSDL. The specification
to be created will provide WSDL definitions for reliable messaging and
the message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body
content. The resulting specification must be programming
language-neutral and platform-neutral.

Lastly, the TC will address the dependencies between the capacity of the
messaging nodes (persistence, message processing) and the level of QoS
that can be provided.

The TC will focus on end-to-end reliable messaging. The TC will
initially define reliable messaging requirements for Web services at the
SOAP protocol level but can specify reliable messaging solutions that
can be used with other messaging protocols.

Interoperability, ease of implementation, and ease of use will be
fundamental characteristics for WS-RM. The TC's work should build upon
similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted and align
with other relevant standards. Alignment means any of the following:
feature reuse, bindings, guidelines on how to jointly use the
specification with other related ones, or addressing requirements from
other related standards.

Composability is a critical aspect of Web Service specifications. The
resulting specification must be non-overlapping with, and have
demonstrated composability with other Web Service specifications that
are being developed in open, recognized standards setting organizations.
The WS-RM TC will collaborate with other relevant OASIS TCs, such as the
ebXML Message Service and the WS-Security TCs, as appropriate. The WS-RM
TC will also work to align with relevant efforts of other organizations,
such as the W3C's Web Service Architecture Working Group.

The WS-RM TC will accept as input the WS-Reliability specification [1]
published by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software and Sun
Microsystems on January 9, 2003. Other contributions in addition to
WS-Reliability will be accepted for consideration without any prejudice
or restrictions, and evaluated on their technical merit, as long as the
contributions conform to this charter.

The benefits and results of this work will be:

The establishment of a standard and interoperable way of achieving
a known, acceptable, and defined level of reliability at the SOAP
messaging level.

The establishment of a common vocabulary for describing reliable
message exchange patterns.

Out Of Scope

The following features are outside the WS-RM TC's scope:

Synchronous RPC at the application level

Conversations

Routing

Security: However, other mechanisms, such as work from the Web Services Security TC at OASIS, should be able to be used along with an implementation of this specification

Encryption

Message Integrity: However, WS-RM's work should be able to be used with Digital Signatures to provide some level of message integrity

Authentication

Message Non-Repudiation

Mechanisms for transaction and service references

As appropriate, this TC will use policy frameworks that are developed in
open, recognized standards setting organizations and that meet the
requirements of this TC for specifying quality of service levels.

In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any
technical specification if it believes that the use, distribution, or
implementation of such specification would necessarily require the
unauthorized infringement of any third party rights known to the
Technical Committee, and such third party has not agreed to provide
necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free, non-discriminatory
terms.

Deliverables

Reliability requirements document, such as use cases for WS-RM in EAI, B2B and wireless scenarios. Due within 2 months of first meeting.

WS-Reliability specification, including description of WS-Reliability bindings to transport protocol(s). This specification will reflect refinements and changes made to the submitted version of WS-Reliability that are identified by the WS-RM TC members for additional functionality and semantic clarity within the scope of the TC
charter. Final draft due within 6 months of first meeting.

At the appropriate time the TC shall submit its Committee Specifications for balloting by OASIS membership for OASIS Standard status.

Language

All business will be conducted in English.

Meetings

The first meeting of the WS-RM TC will take place on Wednesday, 3/26, 2003, from 14:30 to 16:30 PST, over the phone, at a number to be provided to prospective participants no later than 5 days before the
meeting. That date and time will be the time of record for establishing
initial voting membership under the OASIS TC process. After the initial
teleconference meeting, the TC shall meet bi-weekly over the phone
unless another schedule is agreed upon. For example, phone meetings will
not be necessary during face to face meetings.

A face to face meeting of the TC in the San Francisco area of the U.S.
shall be arranged at the first phone meeting, to take place no later
than three months after this initial phone meeting. Subsequent face to
face meetings will be quarterly.

TC Co-Sponsors

The following persons eligible to participate in OASIS technical
committees state that they are committed to the purpose and schedule
stated above: